It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

What Is Discrimination Against The Unborn On The Basis Of Race?

In the U.S. House of Representatives last week, Congressman Trent Franks and a long list of Republican cosponsors introduced H.R. 447, “A bill to prohibit discrimination against the unborn on the basis of sex or race, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.”

Discrimination on the basis of race against anybody sounds bad, but is there an actual problem of discrimination against zygote, embryos and fetuses on the basis of race? Racism against adults and children is sadly easy to find. Can anyone out there identify a single case of racial discrimination in the entire 21st century so far against a zygote, embryo or fetus?

Furthermore, I’d like to ask the more philosophical question of whether racial identity really exists before birth. Given that the concept of race is primarily cultural, and not genetic, how can a zygote, embryo or fetus be said to have a racial identity?

21 comments to What Is Discrimination Against The Unborn On The Basis Of Race?

Most people read that phrase and translate it incorrectly. Ya see – since they tore up the Constitution and replaced it with “security” – the government can now disappear or kill you without any recourse via some stodgy rule of law. This bill is designed so that these same policies apply to everyone equally.

Until we have the full text, it is pointless to discuss a bill and judge its content based solely on the title. That would be like trying to figure out if I were a male, female, white, black, hispanic, asian, or whatever using my *name* as the classifying factor.

Nonsense, Pat. Here we have a quite evocative concept: The idea that zygotes, embryos and fetuses are being discriminated against on the basis of racial identity. If you really don’t think that is worthy of consideration, that’s your failure of imagination.

Rowan, the concept of race actually is genetic, but is often confused with culture. For example, much of what passes for “racism” is actually culturism. That said, race and sex are both reasonable identifiers for the purposes of bills such as this one. Ask the Chinese why it’s so difficult for their sons to find wives these days.

Actually, Dave, racists believe that race is genetic, but it isn’t. Supposed racial groups are actually not genetically coherent, relying on a tiny minority of genetic components that don’t accurately reflect gene flow through human populations on the whole.

Ever read Puddinhead Wilson by Mark Twain? What makes someone “black” or “white” is not genetically determined so much as culturally determined.

Devoid of imagination…hmmm…yeah, I guess that’s what I would like to see. I would like to see people stop throwing out comments for a topic that they do not even understand. Commenting on the title of a bill on the assumption of content and then arguing the content of the bill without knowing what one is even arguing about…well, that’t pretty much the epitomy of stupidity.

Sounds kind of like Congress…which is a microcosm of American society…isn’t it?

I have an idea, lets force an abortion on every women in the world for the next 100 years and then do a world wide census and see how many people we have left. So stupid to call an unborn human anything other than a baby. It is a federal offense to kill an egg of an eagle, the egg is the equal to the womb, oh yeah, we can just call it yolk and then it will no longer be against the law to destroy them.

Humans are sadly the most stupid form of life on the planet. We actually desire to kill ourselves off. The reason is that we have rejected the God of the Bible.

Skin cell, gut cell, tongue cell. All are part of a unique human life. If you want to speak of equality for human life why allow these forms of human life to be extinguished as they are every single day? Why, oh, why?

Jim, I can’t reply to your reply so I’ll reply to my own reply. Skin cells, gut cells, tongue cells aren’t unique. The DNA from those cells is identical to DNA of the cells they came from. Embryo, zygote, unborn are uniquely different individuals.

Over the life course this may strictly be true, Jeff, as people accumulate copying errors. But identical twins come from a splitting of the very same zygote, which by definition implies the very same DNA.

While we’re extending rights based on mythology, what about faeries and goblins? What about non-human magical creatures like unicorns and dragons that nonetheless have a level of intelligence equivalent to our own? What about all the creatures in Dungeons and Dragons with low intelligence but high cunning? It’s going to be a challenge to legislate all this!

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